Indians won 17 medals

Here is the list of medals won at the 2013 Asian Junior Wrestling Championships:

Gold Medals:
1) Mangal Kadyan (50 Kg, Men's Freestyle)
2) Pradeep Kumar (60 Kg, Men's Freestyle)
3) Sumit (96 Kg, Men's Freestyle)


Silver Medals:
1) Mamta Rani (46 Kg, Women's Freestyle)
2) Manisha Mahadev Divekar (72 Kg, Women's Freestyle)
3) Vikas (66 Kg, Men's Freestyle)
4) Pradeep Kumar (84 Kg, Men's Freestyle)
5) Mehar Singh (120 Kg, Men's Greco-Roman)


Bronze Medals:
1) Sheetal Tomar (44 Kg, Women's Freestyle)
2) Divyanshi Tyagi (51 Kg, Women's Freestyle)
3) Seema (61 Kg, Women's Freestyle)
4) Mandeep (60 Kg, Men's Freestyle)
5) Surjeet (120 Kg, Men's Freestyle)
6) Santhosh Yadav (50 Kg, Men's Greco-Roman)
7) Nitin (55 Kg, Men's Greco-Roman)
8) Prabhal Singh (84 Kg, Men's Greco-Roman)
9) Praveen Dagar (96 Kg, Men's Greco-Roman)

I combined the women's and men's categories in the medal count break up in the spirit of equality. I also listed the women ahead of men in their medal categories.

If you notice, India's Gold and Silver hauls are slanted towards the Freestyle category and less towards Greco-Roman style. That just shows that Greco-Roman style is still in the beginning stages of our wrestling culture. Over time there will be more kids who will take up Greco-Roman and we might see better performances in that area.

Also, we are trending towards getting more Bronze medals than Silver and Gold medals. That shows that at the world stage level our boys and girls will definitely be competitive but might not be guaranteed medals according to their current skill level. The gold and silver medalists definitely have a chance to win the medals at their current skill levels, and if the bronze medal winners improve going forward they will have a chance at the world stage as well.

This was the biggest haul of medals for India in this tournament. Even though it is not a world wide event this bodes well for the future of Indian wrestling because Asia usually has strong wrestling teams from Iran, South Korea, North Korea, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and many others.

This proves that India is on its way to becoming a world power in the field of wrestling. This sport should be our bread and butter in the Olympics and in tournaments in general because over history going 1000's of years back had some form of grappling as the sporting mainstay in India. We need to revive that tradition and be a top 3 wrestling country in the world.

India usually has some good Freestyle wrestlers because that suits our traditional schools in India. In the category of Greco-Roman wrestling we still have to advance a bit more. The main difference between Freestyle wrestling and Greco-Roman wrestling is that in Freestyle wrestling the player is allowed to go for the legs to take the opponent down, while in the Greco-Roman wrestling they are not allowed to go for the legs for the take down. The main difference comes in with the utilization of footwork and agility in Freestyle while the Greco-Roman wrestlers have to use their upper body strength and lift/throwdown techniques.

Keep in mind though that it doesn't mean the Freestyle wrestler doesn't have upper body strength and the Greco-Roman wrestler doesn't have agility. The difference is only in the utilization of those characteristics.

Image of Mamta Rani (women's freestyle)

Note: Women only have a freestyle category in wrestling and for my knowledge doesn't have a Greco-Roman category.